Six High Schools Win the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Model Challenge

You know you're getting old when there's some new technology that
you've heard of but never seen in person, yet high-school students are
already toying around with it. Fuel cells are the latest technology to
help us older folks feel anachronistic, as ten high school teams from
around the country competed last week in the first annual Hydrogen
Fuel Cell Model Car Challenge. General Motors Corporation (GM)
provided the components for the cars, and GM and DOE engineers gave
technical advice to the student teams, who built model cars up to a
foot wide and two feet long. The cars used solar power to generate
hydrogen, then used miniature fuel cells to convert that hydrogen into
electricity to power the cars' electric motors. Six of the teams won
prizes in two races—one for speed, and one for climbing the
steepest incline. See the DOE press release.

The competition was part of the National Science Bowl, an academic
competition in which the winners of 66 regional Science Bowl
competitions vie to see which team knows the most about science. This
year, 13,000 students at 1,800 schools participated in the Science
Bowl. The competition reached its climax on Monday, as Thomas
Jefferson High School of Alexandria, Virginia, won the national
championship. See the DOE press release.

Meanwhile, DOE is helping us older folks get involved in fuel cells,
too. In late April, DOE announced plans to start two projects, valued
at a total of $213 million, to develop solid-state fuel cells. Teams
led by FuelCell Energy, Inc. and Acumentrics Corporation will embark
on the fuel-cell projects as part of DOE's Solid State Energy
Conversion Alliance program. See the DOE press release.